The concert of Hakuna en la Puerta del Sol on December 22nd, with Núñez Feijoo and Isabel Díaz Ayuso dancing in the front rows like two adolescents intoxicated by a renewed faith, is the perfect example of what Dorothee Sölle called “cristofascismo”. Sölle, a Lutheran theologian, pacifist, feminist, and poet, invented that neologism to describe the alliance between Christian fundamentalism and political and economic power. “Cristofascismo” depoliticizes the Christian message to encourage mass obedience, delegitimize citizen protests, and marginalize minorities.
This maneuver constitutes an obscene perversion of Jesus of Nazareth’s famous egalitarian ideal, who used the well-known metaphor of the camel and the eye of the needle to condemn the oppression suffered by the working Jewish people under the yoke of Rome and its principal collaborator, the Sanhedrin.
Apparently, Hakuna is an innocuous **Christian pop group** **founded in 2013 by former Opus Dei priest José Pedro Manglano**. The origin of this musical ensemble can only inspire distrust, as Opus Dei, as countless former members, assistants, associates, or auxiliary members attest, has always operated with the secrecy and hypocrisy of a sect.
“El minuto heroico”, the fantastic documentary miniseries by Mònica Terribas Sala, shows how the “work” has exploited, manipulated, mistreated, and plundered thousands of people, under the pretext that it was only helping them to navigate the path to holiness. Few ignore the links of José María Escrivá de Balaguer with the dictatorship of General Franco. “San Josemaría” fueled a Tridentine conception of Catholicism with phrases like “Blessed be pain, loved be pain, hallowed be pain, glorified be pain,” words that he used to whisper to the dying, explaining to them that their suffering was a spiritual treasure, as it brought them closer to the martyrdom of Jesus on the cross.
The charisma of Hakuna is to convey “the joy of following Christ.” Initially nurtured by students from ICADE and the School of Engineering, one of the group’s greatest successes is titled “Un segundo” (One Second), a song with cheesy and empty lyrics: “I burst with love and tremble with joy / There is so much madness in this love that I can’t control / Lose your life, you will receive eternity / The joy of being a slave, a slave of my freedom / If for one second you saw how I look at you / You wouldn’t want to see anything else.” The religious extremism avoids the most uncomfortable issues, such as poverty, injustice, war, inequality, and the exploitation of man by man. It prefers to talk about “joy,” “joy,” and “eternity.”
The **Catholic integrism** reduces Christianity to a series of empty rituals and subscribes to the ideological package of the pro-life movement: opposition to abortion, euthanasia, condoms, and homosexual marriage. A fierce anticommunism and the theory of the great replacement (immigration is the Trojan horse of the Islamization of the West) complete this grotesque interpretation of the Christian message.
Religious extremism avoids the most uncomfortable issues, such as poverty, injustice, war, inequality, and the exploitation of man by man. It prefers to talk about ‘joy’, ‘happiness’ and ‘eternity’… Catholic integrism reduces Christianity to a series of empty rituals and subscribes to the ideological package of the pro-life movement.
Hakuna Matata and everything that orbits around, including unexpected satellites such as Díaz Ayuso’s conversation, which made a Damascus road experience during the pandemic, overlook the reflections of Pope Francis in his encyclical “Fratelli tutti”. The Argentinian Pope describes poverty as the consequence of the selfishness of a minority that hoards and, like Óscar Romero and Ignacio Ellacuría, murdered by the Salvadoran far-right, questions private property: “The Christian tradition never recognized the right to property as absolute or untouchable and emphasized the social function of any form of private property.”
Catholic integralism, deeply rooted in the Spanish bishopric, never disguised its antipathy towards Francisco [referring to Pope Francis] and some priests. Like the zealots of La Sacristía de La Vendée, a “clerical counter-revolutionary gathering,” they even came to express their desire for the Argentinian Pope to ascend to heaven soon.
Catholic integralism, deeply rooted in the Spanish bishopric, never disguised its antipathy towards Francisco [referring to Pope Francis] and some priests. Like the zealots of La Sacristía de La Vendée, a “clerical counter-revolutionary gathering,” they even came to express their desire for the Argentinian Pope to ascend to heaven soon.
**The greatest misfortune of Christianity was the conversion of the bloodthirsty Constantine I.** The Roman emperor transformed the horizontal communities of the early followers of Jesus into a vertical structure, with a hierarchical organization similar to that of the empire and an idea of God copied from the despotism of the Caesars. Constantine thought that Christianity would help him consolidate his power and unite his subjects under a creed that invited obedience. Jesus of Nazareth is one of the most distorted and misrepresented figures in history. The Gospel of Mark, the most primitive, was written around 70 AD.
That is to say, on the same dates that the Roman legions carried out the second destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. The communities that wrote the Gospel of Mark and the other three canonical Gospels attempted to ingratiate themselves with Rome, domesticating the figure of Jesus, presenting him as a pacifist and a collaborator with the occupation and not as what he really was: a political leader who fought against imperialism and its mercenaries. When they handed him a denarius and asked if he should pay taxes, Jesus examined the coin and replied, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
It is rarely mentioned that on the denarius appeared the following inscription: “Tiberius, son of the divine Augustus,” a phrase that constituted a blasphemy for a Jew. Jesus responded ironically, suggesting that Caesar, a false god, deserved nothing and that we should give to God what he truly asked of us: solidarity with the poor, foreigners, widows, and orphans. This message is **the “red thread”** that, according to the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, runs through the entire Bible.
Jesus of Nazareth is one of the most distorted and misrepresented figures in history.
The son of a humble family of workers could not ask that the tributes imposed by the Roman invader to sustain the elites be paid. Jesus challenged the political and religious power of his time, speaking of the imminence of a Kingdom where there would no longer be poor or hungry people. That is why he suffered a political death, since the cross, a particularly atrocious form of execution, was reserved for seditionists and rebellious slaves. The alleged thieves who accompanied him on Golgotha were probably insurgents, members of the Jewish resistance. Many historians point out that radical Jewish nationalist movements, such as the Zealots and Sicarii, probably arose around Jesus.
The Gospels preserve facts that show the belligerent character of the Galilean and his disciples, such as the expulsion of the merchants from the temple with whips or the resistance of the apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane, who drew swords to defend their master, despite the fact that the Roman authorities had established the death penalty for Jews who carried weapons.
The evangelists accuse the Jewish people of the death of Jesus and exonerate Prefect Pontius Pilate, something implausible, because – according to Philo of Alexandria – his mandate was characterized by its “corruption, thefts, violence, offenses, brutality, continuous condemnations without prior process, and a cruelty without limits.” His abuses were so scandalous that Tiberius summoned him to Rome to investigate and judge him. The evangelists culminated their exercise of historical and theological contortion hiding that Jesus had brothers – such as James, also known as James the Just – and introducing old myths to deify his figure.
Just as Horus and Mithras, **Jesus is born of a virgin and, like Osiris, Dionysus, and Inanna, dies and rises again**. And already in the 4th century, the church fixed December 25th as the date of his birth, the day on which the Romans celebrated the winter solstice. In this way, Christ becomes the light of the world and a symbol of the rebirth of life.
Hakuna represents the desire to preserve the established order, with its large doses of injustice and inequality. If that weren’t the case, Núñez Feijoo and Díaz Ayuso wouldn’t dance
Hakuna is one of the fruits of the brutal political and religious repression orchestrated by Wojtyla and Ratzinger against Liberation Theology. Gustavo Gutiérrez, the father of this theological school, affirmed that Jesus advocated for a radical option for the poor and directly opposed the rich and powerful. The Christian message is a utopia because “it is a denunciation of the existing order,” a “mobilizing and subversive” voice. Conversely, Hakuna represents the desire to conserve the established order, with its large doses of injustice and inequality. If that were not the case, Núñez Feijoo and Díaz Ayuso would not be dancing smilingly to the sound of its songs.
It’s **heartbreaking** to see that “Cristofascism” has returned and that figures like Pere Casaldàliga, Ernesto Cardenal, or Diamantino García Acosta, firmly committed to the liberation of human beings from any form of oppression or exploitation, are now just a dear memory in the memory of a few nostalgics.
Published in elDiario.es
**Rafael Narbona**
**Religion Digital**
Catholic integralism
English version translated with AI